Oops ! Liam Fox quits as defence secretary

[malaise]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/oct/14/liam-fox-resignation-adam-werritty
<snip>
The prime minister lost his first Conservative cabinet minister on Friday when Liam Fox folded under the pressure of relentless revelations about a close friend and the access he gained to the heart of government.

No 10 said Fox had crumpled under the weight of this week's news stories and could not bear to contemplate another weekend of claims surrounding his friendship with his best man, Adam Werritty.

Fox's departure came only hours after Werritty had been back for a second interview with the cabinet secretary, Gus O'Donnell. He has been conducting an inquiry into claims that his friendship with Fox potentially jeopardised national security and raised issues around conflicts of interest.

Downing Street insisted it did not push Fox and that the prime minister had been prepared to tough out the relentless coverage and wait for O'Donnell's report to be concluded. However, senior figures began to question whether he could survive that long with new allegations that emerged on Friday. They showed that some of the businessmen who were funding Werritty's trips abroad had an interest in influencing defence policy. The Guardian was poised to report that two of Werritty's financial backers had defence interests.
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So much for Cameron backing him - that scumbag is trying to sae his own job.

change paragraph

[malaise]

1. Fox was the real RW in the Blair Cabinet

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/14/liam-fox-defend-no-longer
<snip>
In the end the defence secretary could defend himself no longer. Once he called the claims that his friendship with Adam Werritty had compromised his office "wild" and "baseless". On Friday he had to concede not only that "mistakes were made", as he passively put it last weekend, but that they were grounds for resignation.

A man who once fancied himself a future leader and heir to Margaret Thatcher, with a world view too important to be constrained by pettifogging civil servants, had to send himself to the backbenches.

Nor is it just Fox who now stands smaller. He spoke for a Tory right that flexed its muscles to protect him this week – and failed all the same. It was striking that George Osborne and Michael Gove joined Fox in the Commons when he mounted his defence on Monday, the trio all luminaries of the party's Cheney-ite wing. That they could not save their man leaves Cameron, who did not appear in the chamber that day, a tad more comfortable.]/b]

The only risk is that a Tory right smarting from defeat will start making its resentment known. They clearly don't feel fully represented by this government – a fact made plain by Fox's obvious belief that he needed to run his own shadow foreign policy – and they have now suffered a bad setback.